ISic000470: Bilingual sign advertising engraving of inscriptions

I.Sicily with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana - Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana
ID
ISic000470
Language
Latin and Ancient Greek
Text type
advertisement
Object type
plaque
Status
No data
Links
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Edition

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Apparatus criticus

  • Text from autopsy

Physical description

Support

Description
A rectangular plaque of marble, intact but lightly chipped around the edges and previously broken in half vertically and subsequently reconnected.
Object type
plaque
Material
marble
Condition
No data
Dimensions
height: 15.5 cmwidth: 24.5 cmdepth: 3 cm

Inscription

Layout
The text fills the face of the plaque, divided vertically by a deeply incised line into two unequal halves, with a column of Greek on the left (wider) and Latin on the right). Each column is approximately centred, and consists of seven lines of text, with the first two lines notably larger than the following five.
Text condition
No data
Lettering

Letter heights
Line 1: 22mm
Line 2: 20mm
Line 3: 8mm
Lines 4-7: 10mm
Interlinear heights
Interlineation line 1 to 2: not measured

Provenance

Place of origin
Panhormus
Provenance found
Original discovery not recorded.

Current location

Place
Palermo, Italy
Repository
Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas , 3574
Autopsy
2017-07-21
Map

Date

Augustan or Julio-Claudian, by the letter forms; also, archaic spelling of some of the Latin, with other Sicilian parallels, rules out much later date (so Wilson 1990); Manni Piraino thinks later 2nd century CE (AD 1 – AD 200)
Evidence
No data

Text type

advertisement

commentary

Although attribution to Palermo remains uncertain, the fact of a bilingual notice, as well as the infelicities in both the Greek and the Latin text have encouraged scholars to accept a Sicilian origin (noting, for example, the scholiast to Cicero who observed that inhabitants of the island used neither language well!). The nature of the errors, such as cum with the genitive have led some to suggest the text was created by an individual whose primary language was in fact Punic, but the suggestion has not been accepted by all. Most recently Consani (2021) argues that the text is the production of a Latin speaker who translated it literally into Greek.

Bibliography

Digital editions
Printed editions

Citation and editorial status

Editor
Jonathan Prag
Principal contributor
Jonathan Prag
Contributors
Last revision
11/10/2023